Manuel Uruchurtu Ramírez

Member of a Porfiriano oligarchy family (son of Captain Mateo Uruchurtu Díaz and Mercedes Ramírez Estrella),[1] the young Uruchurtu travelled to Mexico City to study law. He married a fellow student, the aristocrat Gertrudis Caraza y Landero, with whom he had seven children. He and his family moved to Mexico City. His friendship with the prominent Porfirista and Cientifico Ramón Corral opened the doors to Mexico's political life. His close ties to the dictatorship forced him, upon the fall of the regime and banishment of Porfirio Díaz in 1911, to leave the country and take refuge in Europe.

In 1912 he visited his friend and political godfather in France, the also banished Ramón Corral. On March 1, Uruchurtu met with Corral. Upon completion of his assignment, the Sonoran acquired his ticket to travel on April 10 on the transatlantic liner Paris, from Cherbourg, France to Veracruz, Mexico.

At the end of March or the beginning of April of that year, Uruchurtu, who was staying at the Hotel París, was visited by Guillermo Obregón, son-in-law of Ramón Corral and president of the Great Commission of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. Obregon had paid a little over 27 £ for a first class ticket that would allow him to sail on the luxurious ocean liner RMS Titanic's maiden voyage, but had changed his mind and wished to exchange tickets, to which Uruchurtu agreed; Guillermo Obregón would travel in the Paris and Uruchurtu in the Titanic with the ticket No. P C 17601.

On April 8, Uruchurtu was invited to a party with exiles loyal to Porfirio Diaz and on the 10th of the same month he sent a postcard to his mother in Hermosillo, telling her that the photograph on the postcard was more or less the ship in which he would travel, and that upon arriving in Mexico he would visit her in Hermosillo to tell her about the trip on the famous ship. That same day, in Cherbourg, he boarded the Titanic along with 273 other passengers.

After the wreck of the ship, the body of Uruchurtu was never recovered.[2]

The popularly-accepted anecdote of Uruchurtu tells that on the night of the sinking of the Titanic, Uruchurtu was assigned to lifeboat number 11 thanks to his status as a congressman on an official visit. Once on board, he observed a second-class lady passenger named Elizabeth Ramell Nye (age 29), who begged to be included in the lifeboat, claiming that her husband and son were waiting in New York. The officers refused to let her get on the boat since it was at its maximum capacity and would jeopardize its stability. Uruchurtu exited the lifeboat and gave his place to the lady, asking that in case he died, she would visit his wife and family in Mexico (Hermosillo and Xalapa) to let them know about his last minutes in life. Nye was rescued and survived; but Uruchurtu died in the sinking. Later it was discovered that Elizabeth Nye had lied, since she was not married or had any children. However, the woman kept her promise and in 1924 traveled to Xalapa, Veracruz to find the widow of Uruchurtu and tell her the story of her husband's last moments.[3]

On August 24, 2012, the journalist Guadalupe Loaeza, author of the book El caballero del Titanic (The Gentleman of the Titanic), published on the centenary of the sinking, recounted the events described above for El Mañana. However, she has stated publicly that there is no proof of this anecdote.[4]